Short Track Speed Skating

Short Track Speed Skating is held on an oval ice track (circumference of 111.12 m). This unusual distance comes about as the rink area is the same size as an international-sized hockey rink (60 m by 30 m). Short track speed skating started as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. It was upgraded to a full Olympic sport in 1992 and has been part of the Winter Olympics ever since.

2014 Events

A total of eight short track speed skating events will be held at Sochi in 2014: for men and women 500 m,
1,000 m, 1,500 m, and also the
5,000 m Relay for men and 3,000 m Relay for women.

Trivia

Australian Steven Bradbury won his country's first Winter Olympic Games gold medal in the 2002 Salt Lake City 1,000 m Short Track event, when all of the other competitors spectacularly fell over on the last bend. (see video).

At the 2010 Winter Olympics, Haralds Silovs became the first athlete in Olympic history to participate in both short track (1500m) and long track (5000m) speed skating.

The Sochi 2014 Speed Skating competition was dominated by the Dutch. The country made a clean sweep of the medals four times – men's 5000m, 500m and 10,000m as also the women's 1500m. Of the 36 medals awarded, the Dutch won a whopping 23, including eight gold.